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Friday, June 7, 2013

Day 11 - Land ho!

The consistent SE trade wind of 18-20 Knots blew all night and Ladybug swept along at 5.5K to 6.0K with a partial jib. We sighted land, the mountain slopes of Kadavu Island, shortly after sunrise and celebrated with a glass of cold fruit juice. The sky was finally clearing and rays of sunshine warmed us through the portlights. At 0800 hours we reached our initial GPS waypoint and debated whether to check into Levuka, the old Fijian capital, or Savusavu where most of our friends are at this time. Plus, we would not have to heave to at night if we carried on the extra 60nm to Savusavu.

The conditions are still very uncomfortable and we sometimes wonder why we are doing this. I was reading Robert Service's poems from the Yukon Gold Rush days and found a verse which goes like this:

" There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest.
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest."

Our position at 3pm today was 18 22S 178 57E and we achieved a total of 136nm.

Around the World Single-Handed

Free e-book download. Harry Pidgeon's beautifully written account of the second person to sail around the world alone in an engineless 34 foot sailboat. This e-Book is a based on a carefully edited scan of the first edition including excellent photographs by the author. Click on one of the following links to download: e-pub, Mobi, and PDF. Best read on an e-reader (PDF version not as well formatted), but you can download Calibre to read e-pubs on your computer.